Sweden: Pirate Bay co-founder sentenced in biggest-ever hacking trial

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Even Gottfrid Svartholm’s own defense lawyer says the investigation linking the co-founder of the Pirate Bay file-sharing site to criminal hacking and bank fraud in Sweden was “very robust” and forensically detailed.

“There’s no argument about that: we know it was done, we know how it was done,” Ola Salomonsson told GlobalPost after the trial. "But it wasn’t Gottfrid who did it."

Svartholm, the programming prodigy who built the “tracker” program behind the Swedish file-sharing website, was sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison in Sweden’s biggest-ever hacking trial.

The 28-year-old was convicted of hacking Logica, a data provider, from which he allegedly downloaded thousands of Swedish identity numbers, and Nordea, a Scandinavian bank, from which he was accused of trying to withdraw the equivalent of almost a million dollars, of which $4,100 was successfully transferred to the bank account of another of the accused.

“The data breaches have been very extensive and technically advanced,” the court said in its judgment. “The attacker has affected very sensitive systems such as the mainframes at Logica and Nordea.”

Svartholm was extradited last September from Cambodia, where he had been living, to face those charges and to serve the sentence he had received for his part in setting up the Pirate Bay.

Although computers seized from his apartment contained data linking them to the offences, he has strongly denied having anything to do with the attacks. He also denied knowing either Mathias Gustafsson, the hacker cited as his co-conspirator, or Abdul Rahim Bashe Said and Seifaddin Sedira, the two people into whose accounts the money was attempted to be transferred.

“I’m not denying that they are there,” he said of the incriminating data sets found on his computers. “I’m denying that I have put them there.”

Instead, he maintains his computers were remotely controlled by a third party whose identity he’s refused to divulge.

“I fear for my life,” he said when asked in court why he wouldn’t name the perpetrators. “Do you know what happens to so-called snitches in prison?”

He added that the people he suspected had visited him in Cambodia.

Svartholm was sentenced in 2009 to a year in prison and his share of a $ 4 million fine for aiding copyright infringement by setting up Pirate Bay, a hugely popular file-sharing site.

The site, which enables users to share billions of dollars worth of music and films free, boasted that its visitors made up roughly half the internet’s traffic in 2011.

Svartholm was the only one of Pirate Bay’s three founders not to turn up in court for their appeal in 2010, claiming he was unwell and couldn’t travel from Cambodia.

In this year’s trial, the prosecution and defense each called witnesses to give evidence about whether it was possible to remotely control a computer without leaving any trace.

Richard Holmboe, the computer security expert called by the defense, claimed that it was.

“Admittedly, the investigation into the case has not completely ruled out the possibility of erasing all traces of remote control,” the court concluded in its judgment. “But it has demonstrated the prosecutor's case that remote control is unlikely strong enough that this hypothesis can be considered refuted.”

Abdul-Rahim Bashe Said, who withdrew the money transferred from Nordea into his bank account, claimed to have had no contact with Svartholm, saying only that he had received a call from an unknown person who had threatened to shoot every single member of his family if he did not take the money.

Svartholm also denied taking part in online chats that appeared to show him communicating with Gustafsson about their hacking exploits. He claimed others had used his internet handle or “nick.”

After the judgment, Svartholm’s mother Kristina, an emeritus professor of linguistics at Stockholm University, said that despite the strong evidence to the contrary, she was not convinced her son was guilty.

“I just know that Gottfrid is not interested in money, and he would definitely object to hurting other people,” she said. “I mean he’s a sensitive person, even if the media doesn’t know that of him. So I can’t understand it. I really can’t.”

After the verdict she tweeted to “GottfridSW@anakata,” a fake Twitter account pretending to be her son’s, aiming to demonstrate how easy it is to adopt others’ online identities.

Gustafsson, who was not shown to be involved in the bank intrusion, was given a suspended one-year sentence and placed on probation. He was also referred to treatment for drug and alcohol problems. Sedira was convicted of three counts of drug trafficking.

Svartholm’s lawyer Salomonsson said he and his client had yet to decide whether to appeal the judgment.

“He’s got the sentence. I gave it to him today,” he said. “We have not yet decided whether to appeal. There’s quite a lot to consider.”